A couple of months ago I saw on Facebook John Irving's announcement that he's writing his last "long novel," though he plans to write some shorter fiction. This is the pattern followed by another of my favorite authors, Lawrence Block, who a few years ago stopped writing full-length novels and did short stories. Now he mostly just edits compilations of stories. Another of my most-read authors the last few years, Donald Westlake, has been dead for 14 years. Last year James SA Corey released the last book in The Expanse series though there's one final novella coming out soon.
I guess if I'm not already dead and manage to live longer, I'll have to find new authors to read because a lot of the ones I have read are no longer going to have new material. It's sad but it's also pretty obvious: nothing lasts forever. I suppose even Eric Filler will eventually stop pumping out stories.
You have to wonder how much longer guys like Stephen King, James Patterson, or John Grisham will hang around. I mean they're all probably in their 70s by now. Writing, like acting or other creative endeavors, can take a lot of effort. As you get older, the day-to-day grind gets harder and harder--even for me! I think when I did the math, in 2010 I wrote around 1 million words between all the various stories I wrote that year. Now a days, I put out more books but they're shorter, many around the 15,000-20,000 word mark. I might do about 20 of those, so that's only about 400,000 words, or 40% of what I did in 2010.
When I wrote Where You Belong, the rough draft of the second draft was about 180,000 words. I wrote it in about 3 months by working hours after work in libraries and coffee shops and Saturdays I'd do a marathon writing session of 8-10 hours (with breaks for lunch and dinner) that sometimes would total about 12,000 words a day! But now I write maybe half that on Saturdays and the rest of the week not much at all.
Some of it is motivation. I was really intent on writing that book, so I was willing to do the work. But some of it is just getting older and not really being able to be hunched over a computer that long. Or not being able to live on ham sandwiches, potato chips, and cookies four days a week.
That's just the sad reality of it. It seemed like an appropriate meditation for Insecure Writing Support Group day and Groundhog Day. For a lot of us there's really no longer any hope of an early spring. Just an endless winter until the grave.
How's that for insecure?
2 comments:
Yes, everything comes to an end eventually. Aging isn't going to make things easier. I think for me it's more about my doubts that lower that motivation. I tend to want to do something that makes a difference, and what has really become of my novels? Not much...lol. I keep waiting and trying to get some brilliant novel idea that I will have no doubt I should write it. That the writing will just flow from my fingertips and none of it will be forced. Anyway, I can only just laugh about it for now. I really do admire all the work you put in.
All valid points. Everyone eventually has to stop writing. Stephen King may have technically slowed down if I were to compare releases to the past. I imagine he doesn't know what to do if he's not writing. When I try to look at how that would even be for me, I don't actually know how to stop. Given, I'm near the beginning of my career still. But things have revolved around writing for so long that I suppose I'll just keep on doing it until I lose interest.
Post a Comment